The 10 Best Non-Subscription Invoicing and Time Tracking Apps

Marketcircle’s Billings was discontinued in June 2013 in favour of their subscription-based Billings Pro, an app which we’ve reviewed and think is awesome. Subscription-based software isn’t for everyone, however, and we’ve been frequently asked to recommend some alternative apps to Billings Pro that doesn’t require any recurring costs.

If you’re looking for an invoicing or time tracking app to replace Billings, or perhaps simply want to know what’s out there, here’s the 10 best simple time tracking and invoicing apps on the Mac today.

Apple’s iWork spreadsheet app, Numbers, is a great tool to use for both invoicing and time tracking. Unlike more traditional spreadsheet apps such as Microsoft Excel, you can add multiple tables to the same page and aren’t restricted to a page full of cells, allowing you to drag and drop all sorts of content, such as images and text boxes.

Included in the app is a template for Invoicing which can be modified and saved as a custom template to serve your needs.

Since you’re using a spreadsheet, you’re free to customise a table dedicated to time tracking and you can simply track all the time you want by having a table for each client, keeping everything organised.

ProfitTrain is another great example of a complete invoicing and time tracking solution. It supports multiple businesses, each with their own clients and presets. ProfitTrain aims to handle as much of your business as possible, providing support for expenses and balance sheets.

There’s a great time-tracking function with built-in stopwatch and invoices are not only professional looking but they can be customised using HTML. With a bit of web design then your invoices can be truly unique.

The app supports estimates and invoices can be saved in this format and emailed to clients, getting approval before you start doing any work that you might not get paid for!

A complete invoicing tool, Totals provides a level of customisation and control over invoices that many other apps just don’t offer. Unlike some of the other offerings here, Totals isn’t aimed at those wanting to time track (though you can add any time quite easily) but instead is for businesses selling physical goods or offering fixed price services. The app can even keep track of your inventory, letting you know when you’re about to sell out of a certain item.

To make things even easier, Totals syncs via iCloud, Dropbox, Google Drive… pretty much any online service you can think of.

You can track payments made on each invoice as well as customise them as you see fit. A great feature is PDF backdrops on invoices, allowing you to set some great watermarks on your invoices.

Lumina is developed by the same team that create Totals and it offers features that their other app doesn’t do, which is time tracking. But beyond that, it also provides a place to store quick notes and to-do items. This is great when you know there’s something you need to get done during the time you’re spending on any given day.

The app is unobtrusive and supports multiple clients as well as being able to sync between Macs as well as your iPhone.

A useful stopwatch menu item gives you instant access to projects, clients and time tracking information and because it lives in the Menu Bar, you can quickly see how much time you’re spending.

Timing describes itself as “the time tracker you always wanted” and it’s easy to see why. It’s a supercharged time tracker that doesn’t just track when you press start and stop – it tracks not only the time you spend in applications but the time spent in each *file*. For designers who make a living inside of Adobe InDesign, you can easily distinguish how long you spent working for one client before moving on to the next.

Beyond clocking up the hours, you’re presented with access to your historical data in chart and graph views, showing where you spend your time. Not only is it useful for making sure you’re charging for work you do but you can see where your time is going. You’d probably be surprised how much time you accrue using Twitter or Facebook!

Eon is a great example of an app that does one thing, but it does it really well. On the surface it appears to be nothing more than a simple time-tracking app, yet it’s full of great features.

You can manage projects so the right time is billed to the right clients and if you’re charging per minute, you can round time to the nearest minute, 5 minutes, hour or whatever increment you might want to.

Eon is a great time tracking app that works well on its own but what really sets it apart is its support for updating project times with services such as Basecamp and FreeAgent.

Minco is another lightweight time tracking app. Minco operates in a similar way to Eon but instead of dedicated projects, it integrates with Reminders on your Mac and uses tasks as project names.

There are a variety of output options to record tasks, from CSV files to submitting times via a custom URL scheme that you can build.

Tracked time can also be saved directly to your calendar so you can visualise how much time you’ve spent on projects. Doing this is great if you use iCloud, Google or Microsoft Exchange as you can then have this time appear on all your other devices.

Another lightweight time tracking app, Timecop sits in your Mac’s Menu Bar and features both a standard timer for projects as well as monitoring time spent in applications.

Timecop can also detect when your Mac is idle so if you get called to an urgent meeting whilst Timecop is tracking how much time you’ve spent in Adobe Photoshop, it won’t just continue to track the time you’re not doing anything.

All of the tracked time can be exported as a CSV which you can then enter into your billing system of choice.

Chronos is a well rounded time tracking app for the Mac which features multiple project support and comments for any time tracked. Whilst lacking any automatic application tracking, it does feature idle detection so that your timer won’t overrun when you’re away from your Mac.

Like some of the other apps we’ve looked at today, you can export your tracked time to a CSV file. Chronos goes one step further and lets you specify what data to export in case you don’t need the comments or date of the tracked time.

As you’d expect, there’s a great Menu Bar item so you can easily track time without switching applications needlessly.

Conclusion

So there you are: the best basic time tracking and invoicing tools for your Mac. They’re cheap, don’t require a subscription, and are likely to be the perfect fix if you don’t need to send out invoices all the time — and still might fit the bill even if you invoice daily.

Got a favorite non-subscription invoicing app we missed? We’d love to hear about it in the comments below.